At the first break, Daniel Negreanu doesn’t disappear for long. Greg Pappas busted out in the final moments of the last level and Daniel seems like he doesn’t want to leave his early-days rush unattended.
Daniel is standing alone on the stage, eager.
“You have two minutes and twenty seconds left on your break,” the dealer tells him.
“I’m ready to play,” Daniel says and then turns to the dealer. “Are you ready to play?”
Any chip lead here is tenuous at best. In the waning moments of the last level, Daniel’s chip lead had been overtaken by Nicky Frangos.
The TD reads off the chip counts, though, and it’s clear that it’s still anybody’s game.
Daniel 214,000
Nicky 274,000
Nes 114,000
Jeff 126,000
Severin 132,000
But something bad is happening now. It’s hard to say exactly what, but it’s clear Daniel has made a decision to continue playing fast. He still looks eager for the first ten minutes of play. Then, he loses two straight hands, the worst of which ended in him missing one of a million outs on the river in a hand against Nicky. Daniel knows he has to bet to win and, thus, he does. Nicky cocks his head to the left, purses his lips, and then calls with only a pair of fives. Daniel shows his king-high and pushes the monster pot over to Nicky.
Now Daniel is in a precarious position. He can’t play fast anymore. The next hand he plays past fourth street is going to be either the one that doubles him up or sends him out to the Omaha 8/B event that begins at 5pm.
It’s just five mminutes later that he’s all in on fifth street with a pair of jacks and a backdoor flush draw. He’s run directly into Severin’s rolled up deuces. Daniel needs running diamonds or a jack to suck out. Sixth street is a baby black card.
Now, there are only two cards in the deck that can save him. The nature of stud doesn’t offer a ton of drama, but all-in, the river card is still dealt down, and Daniel feels obliged to squeeze it.
“Ahhhh, it’s a spaaade,” he says and continued to squeeze. “It’s a jack!”
He stands up and slaps his card down on the table. It’s red and nothing close to a jack.
He’s done.
“Time for the Omaha!” he says and bounds from his seat.
In one hour, he’ll be sitting down for another tournament.
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